


Of Espresso Machines and Secret Menus

by dodecahedrons



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, coffee shop AU, initial kismesis, weird social media subplot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 00:32:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6882133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dodecahedrons/pseuds/dodecahedrons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deep in the gayborhood of Overdown, New York, lies a small coffee shop by the painfully nonsensical name Esspresso, where a certain Dave Strider happens to painstakingly work. But it just so happens that Eridan Ampora, local wannabe hipster and semi-known black and white photographer who runs a Tumblr blog, wants to work there too. And Dave is the only employee. Dave has to work through his initial hatred for the pompous "twat" and realize that his personal bias can't get in the way of coffee shop training - and that maybe, Esspresso isn't such a shitty place to work after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Espresso Machines and Secret Menus

The espresso machine hissed as some water spilled out of the top, boiling it away as it touched the hot lower portion of the machine. It wasn't necessarily the busiest hour of the day, but people do as people do. In this case, people are doing what they need to do to get through the day. What better way to fulfil the necessity of being awake than with the false energy granted to you by caffiene, which just so happens to be in an ever popular, ever transforming drink?

Dave, the longest lasting employee of Overdown's most popular coffee shop - Esspresso, as it was oh so cleverly named - was working on some eccentric frapuccino some tweenager had pulled off Pinterest and insisted was a secret menu item ("Do we look like we sell some Harry Potter-inspired bullshit?" probably wasnt the best choice of words, because Dave's manager had to give the girl a free frapuccino, out of his own check) when the bell chimed. Bell chimes only meant one thing - another customer to deal with while the magical frapuccino of non-existence was mixing.

"Hello, and welcome to Esspresso, what can I get you?" Dave deadpanned on cue, turning to face the counter. Except, when he turned, he wasn't met by another tweenager spouting the long-winded recipe to a cookie dough frapuccino or whatever the hell they would come up with next, but rather a similarly-expressioned teenager dressed in a plaid button-up and black skinny jeans. A purple streak adorned his otherwise pitch black hair, as if to say "I dress like everyone else, but why not spice up my bland appearance with a bland trend that people use to stand out?". He cleared his throat, staring directly into Dave's shaded eyes. After glancing the only on-duty staff member aside from the manager, who was nowhere to be seen at the current moment, the teenager cleared his throat and spoke up.

"Are you the fuck who has to train me?"

Dave gave a snort. "Hell no. We don't train on Mondays. They're our busiest and most understaffed days. Come back tomorrow when I'm not dealing with some Tumblerette's Dumbledoorccino or whatever."

" _Excuse you_! It's called a Phoenix Roast! Not everything has -ccino on it, you twat," a shrill voice called from the end of the counter. Both teenagers turned their heads to the aforementioned tweenager, who was standing with her hands placed delicately on her pink-skirt adorned waist. "And I'm _waiting_. I didn't pay $5.25 for such a long wait."

Dave rolled his eyes behind his Ray Bans and turned to the blender, which had just stopped whirring. "Yeah, and I don't work minimum wage to watch you squint at your phone while you read me a novel of a recipe, but I'm not complaining." He decided to completely forgo the snarky comment he could have made about the girl's choice of insult, but he decided to save it for when she wasn't completely capable of ranting about a barista on her social media for her whole twenty-seven followers to laugh at and share to their similarly-numbered amounts of followers. Or, heaven forbid she put it on that godawful "not always working" website. That website made him want to quit just from thinking about it.

"Also! I am _not_ a Tumblerette," she continued, "I happen to have 250 followers on Instagram! And, I am a proficient Pinterest user! Now, give me my Phoenix Roast before I complain to the manager!" Her hands were still on her hips, but she decided to jut her hips out to the left, causing the chain hanging from the belt loop that for some reason existed on the elastic band skirt she wore to jingle, resonating perfectly to the tone of edge her glare was giving off.

Dave groaned, turning to face the teenager who had walked in in the midst of this whole fiasco. "Excuse me for a moment, I have to deal with world renown instagram user Edgy underscore Mc underscore MyChemicalRomance - no spaces - and her order of the Phoenix over here. I'll be back with reprimanding you for your shit timing in a sec." With that, he turned his back to the purple-streaked teen and turned to the blender, which had just completely powered off. He pulled the container out of the grips of the machine and poured the oddly pumpkin spice-looking coffee milkshake into their branded cup.

"About fucking time," Edgy_Mc_MyChemicalRomance commented. Dave sighed, pulling the whipped cream piper from the shelf above the blenders and piping a half-assed spiral of a topping onto the Phoenix Roast (or more commonly known as the Pumpkin Spice with Extra Spice) before adding the signature domed lid and turning to walk to the end of the counter. The girl stared expectantly at Dave, still standing in the same position as before, as Dave stared back at her through perfectly dark glasses.

"Well?" she scoffed.

"I don't think I got your name," he said slowly, glancing at the cup. Sure, it had the order label on it - again, Pumpkin Spice Frap, x3 Spice - but he decided this had to be done anyway.

"My name? Excuse me, I don't think anyone else is in here for you to get me mixed up with? Just give me the damn drink."

"Tough shit, Edgy, because unless you give me your name, I'll refund you the $5.20-whatever and lose my job just to spite you," the blond hummed, smirk evident in his voice to make up for the lack of emotion present on his face. The girl stared expectantly for just a bit longer before rolling her eyes and groaning.

"Theresa. Happy?"

"Perfectly," he mused, pulling a Sharpie from his apron pocket and carefully penning a name down. Once he was done, he capped the marker and set the drink on the counter. "One Nonexistant Frap for Theresa. Enjoy."

Edgy - now known as Theresa - huffed and took her drink from the counter, eyeing the name. "Excuse me? Edgelord? Did you not ask for-"

"I asked for your name. I never said I was going to write it, did I?"

Theresa was visibly fuming by this point, but rather than stick around and fight with Dave, she huffed and took a straw from the outside of the counter. "Eff off," she mumbled, tossing the straw wrapper over the counter and passing by the black haired teenager who was waiting oddly impatiently at the register. Brushed by being a gentler way of saying she deliberately knocked arms with the poor kid just to prove some non-existant point to Dave. The bell above the door chimed as the girl left, but she made it a point to make direct eye contact (or what she assumed was direct eye contact, anyway) with her barista of the day before flipping him the bird. He brushed it off and acted like he - all the while making it obvious he did just to piss her off - before bending down to pick up the wrapper she'd grudgingly tossed.

The boy at the counter whisteled slowly, and Dave noticed that there some hands-being-put-in-and-out-of-the-pockets-uncomfortably shit going on. Before he could say anything though, the teen spoke up. "Shit, does that always happen?"

"If I say yes, will you come back tomorrow when someone who isn't a blatant liar is working?" came his response. "Also, you're trying to get me to train you, and you havent told me shit about you."

"About me? What is this, a first date?" the teenager responded, shock slightly evident in his voice. Dave turned his back once again, this time to clean up the counter near the blender.

"At Esspresso? Hell no. Anywhere else? If you'd give me your god forsaken name."

"Eridan Ampora. Can we start the training now, for Christ's sake? I've been here for ten minutes and the only thing I've learned is my coworker is an absolute shitnozzle."

Tossing the napkin he used into the trash can adjascent to him (specifically under the counter with the cash register on it), Dave turned his head just slightly to see Eridan out of the corner of his eye. "At least you can insult someone properly. I've had enough of kids coming in here and insulting eachother with weak ass remarks like 'twat' or 'bastard' or the godforsaken 'fuckass'. _Please_ , spare me of the word 'fuckass'," he dramatically spoke, grabbing the whipped cream piper and walking to the fridge directly to his left.

"Anything else you need to know before I can start my training?" Eridan inquired, desparation saturating the tone of voice used.

"Your pronouns preferably. Also, what the hell I'm supposed to be training you for."

"My... Pronouns?" the tone now was dumbfounded.

"Listen, you're in the gayest area of Overdown - literal LGBT central - and you're expecting me not to ask your pronouns? What year are you in?" Dave snipped, opening the fridge on the first question and closing it as punctuation to the second. He didn't even bother glancing back at the already annoying teenager.

"I wasn't aware that Dalchest Street was gay world."

"Well, now you know. Please, give me your pronouns before I lose my shit."

"Uh... Male?" Eridan finally responded. Dave turned in time to see a shrug.

"Got it. See, was that so hard?"

"Fuck off."

"Anyway," Dave cleared his throat, watching as some people walked by the window front of the coffee shop, completely passing it by without even thinking of coming in. He absently wondered if Theresa was out there, banging pots and pans and throwing her Ronshake all over people before continuing. "As I said, we don't train on Mondays. That wasn't some weird ass prejudice I pulled out of my ass, I'm being serious. I can get the manager, if you so please? If you'd rather not cause a giant shitstorm, though, I'd kindly ask you to walk your ass out the door and return when I can actually help you master an Espresso machine."

Eridan huffed, turning on his heel without another word. And as the bell chimed again, Dave gave a forced, visible smile to himself.

Maybe - _hopefully_ \- that was the last he'd see of both Theresa and Eridan. Forever.


End file.
